Rise of the Forbidden Book 1: Darkforce Rising
by Aeron Solo
Summary: They say we must learn from the past. No one bothered, until a long forgotten past came back to haunt the present day. Perhaps it takes the past to fight the past.
1. Memories of the Fallen

Quiet footsteps resounded in a darkened hallway whose walls were studded with glowing yellow crystals that radiated light. A tall, dark-haired young man in silver-highlighted dark clothing strode up to a doorway, held his hand up to a keypad, and waited a moment for the security system to disengage. The door chimed once and opened, allowing him to move on. "Coming, Eterna?"

"Coming," a voice called as a brown-haired young woman in a knee-length purple dress with bluish leggings underneath walked after him, a brilliant staff of purplish metal in hand tipped on each end with a crystalline violet blade. On either side of the blades extended short dragon-wing like protrusions with heliotrope-colored webbings. A faint starry nimbus surrounded the weapon, humming quietly in the darkness.

The young man waited until his companion passed through the doorway. Then, with a click he shut the door. "Would you like it if the hallway were lit?" he asked.

Eterna sighed. "Aeric, I could do it myself you know," she told her friend in a mildly irritated tone of voice. "The question is whether _you_ want it lit. I'm perfectly fine either way."

Aeric shrugged. "Suit yourself." He uttered a short phrase as they passed a crystal on the wall. A moment later, all the crystals in the hallway intensified their glow, illuminating the entire hallway with a brilliant white light. Neither person was bothered by the sudden change in lighting.

They passed through doorway after doorway until they finally came to a stairway. "After you," Aeric said, motioning for Eterna to go on ahead. Eterna smiled faintly in amusement and obliged, heading into the stairwell before Aeric followed closely behind, manifesting a darkened silver staff with a silver-edged black blade on either end out of pure darkness as he kept a careful watch behind them.

They came to the top and opened the door to reveal a rock with a pale green sword planted squarely within at its top. Around them was a forest clearing, tranquil with the sounds of nature.

Aeric and Eterna walked up to the rock and stood facing the sword. Lying around it were a number of bouquets, evidence that other people had visited before them.

Etched in the rock in a continuous circle were the following words: _Here stands O'tora Stomr, the Eihrisingrr of Aeron Solo._

Eterna sighed. "How long has it been now?"

"Six years," Aeric replied.

"Feels much longer than six, doesn't it?"

"Mmm," Aeric agreed, putting an arm around his friend and hugging her close, allowing his staff to disappear in a flare of shadow. Eterna planted her own staff in the ground next to her and rested her head against Aeric's chest, her eyes on the sword.

"Did you bring anything?" Eterna asked.

"Only my memories. You know I travel light."

Eterna tutted. "This is Aeron we're talking, you know."

"I know. But he wouldn't have wanted me to shirk my duties."

Eterna smiled playfully and flicked a lock of hair out of Aeric's eyes. "Oh, so protecting me is still more important than remembering a fallen friend?"

Aeric said nothing, but Eterna still saw his cheeks grow slightly red from discomfort. Laughing softly, she turned away and reached into her pack, drawing from it a wreath and resting it against O'tora Stomr's blade. Murmuring a short phrase under her breath, she fed the budding flowers on the wreath her energy, nurturing them until they blossomed and swayed gently in the wind. Their golden petals spiraled in a peculiar pattern around the stamens and pistil, reminiscent of the environment they had been raised in.

Aeric looked at the flowers. "He loved Gildervinds the most, didn't he?"

Eterna nodded. "Why else did you think I took us to that place?"

Aeric sighed and allowed a wry smile to escape his lips. "Well, I hope he appreciates them, since we're not Skyborne."

Eterna laughed softly, remembering how difficult it was for them to get the seeds. "It wasn't too easy, no."

"They happen to only be grown in environments where surrounding winds are 150 mph or higher," Aeric recalled. "And the best ones were grown in 300 mph wind environments."

They allowed a moment of silence to fall in between them. Then, "If they can only be grown in extremely windy environments, how did you get them to bloom so easily?"

Eterna pulled Aeric's head down towards her and whispered in his ear. "_Magic_."

Aeric rolled his eyes as Eterna danced away, laughing at him. "You too, huh?"

"Well, it's the truth," Eterna said innocently. Aeric growled as Eterna burst out with laughter, frustrated at being so outmaneuvered. "Come on, Aeric, it won't do you any good to brood about it. What is will always be, until somebody comes and screws it up. Now let's get going, the others will be waiting if we don't leave soon," Eterna said as she plucked her staff from where it was planted in the ground.

Aeric vanished in a blur of darkness and reappeared right next to his companion, manifesting the bladed staff that was his weapon. "Well then, we ought to move quickly."

The two faded away into the stairwell they emerged from. Aeric closed the door, leaving behind no trace of an exit upon a large rock formation.


	2. Chapter 1

"Aerín!" a young woman with lavender hair shouted, searching around the house. "Where is that child?" she wondered aloud as she peered into the seven-year-old's room. "Not there," she murmured to herself as she withdrew. She entered the living room, where an Espeon was resting on the couch. "Hey, Espeon," she asked, shaking the psychic feline awake. "Have you seen Aerín this morning?"

The cat groggily blinked her eyes. _What do you think?_ she asked rather crankily. _In case you didn't notice, I was sort of asleep._ _What, did you think that I slept with my eyes open?_

"Sorry," the young lady said rather sheepishly. "Can you look for her, please?"

The cat gave a sigh and closed her eyes, searching for the spunky young girl's mischievous mindset. _I believe she's in YOUR room at the moment, creeping slowly towards Wallace._

"_My_ room?" the woman echoed, bewildered. "Why would she be there?"

The cat shrugged. _Search me, but she's got a bottle of hair gel in one hand and a bottle of bleach in the other._ She flopped back down. _Judging by what that child is like, you might want to consider stopping her before something nasty happens._

"'Something nasty…?'"

_Good night, Winona._

"Huh?"

Soft snores told Winona that Espeon was already asleep.

Winona stared at the cat for a moment. "Something nasty indeed…" she muttered, pondering. _Hair gel, bleach…_she thought, her chin cupped in her hand. Slowly the puzzle put itself together. "Oh, no," she groaned, rushing up the stairs.

"Five."

Axel Nightblazer, apparent age anywhere from 16 through 18 years old but real age almost one billion times that, waited patiently outside a large house seemingly grown out of the ground like the trees surrounding it.

"Four." The "young" man's midnight blue hair waved backwards in the wind, a tad longer than most males liked to keep their hair, but nonetheless passable as "short" hair.

"Three." A Pikachu tapped its foot on his shoulder, waiting almost as patiently as its companion.

"Two." A blue screen popped out from Axel's large headphones, showing the time. He blinked his sapphire blue eyes and privately wondered to himself if she could pull it off.

"One." Axel leaned back against the tree behind him and grinned in anticipation.

"Zero."

"ARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!"

Axel grinned, watching the chaos unfolding inside the house with the x-ray function in his eyepiece. "Now this is my idea of morning entertainment."

"Aerín!" Wallace shouted, his usually gentlemanly manner cast off in his annoyance at his rather rude awakening. "What did you do to my hair?"

"No-thing~!" Aerín sang out, bouncing straight over a shocked Winona and landing lightly at the bottom of the stairs. "Can't catch me~!" she called, racing forward only to bump into a pair of folded blue-sleeved arms. The girl slowly looked up to see Axel raise a midnight blue eyebrow at her in amusement.

"Bleached and spiked hair? Is that really the best you can do?" Axel asked.

"What do you think? Anything more would get me grounded!"

Axel chuckled and gave his surrogate niece a hug and a pat on the back. "I'll deal with your parents," he said, waving her away. "Go play while they cool down."

Aerín beamed and nodded, skipping away into the forest. Axel watched her go, lost in memory. "So it's been five years, hasn't it?" he asked, not turning around.

A young man with shadowed hair and silver eyes garbed in a long-sleeved black shirt and a dark gray vest with silver lining raised a dark eyebrow, turning his head toward Axel. "How long did it take you to realize I was here?"

Axel turned around, facing his companion. "About five seconds. Welcome back, Aeric."

Aeric straightened, dusting his jacket off and lifting himself away from the tree he was leaning against. "Glad I could make someone else's day. How are things around here?"

Axel shrugged. "They're typical. As typical as one can expect from a family like this, anyway."

"Any disasters as of late?"

"If you mean the kind that we should really be worried about, no. If you mean the mundane disasters that make up everyday life in this family, well, that should be self explanatory."

"That much like you, is she?" he heard a voice wonder aloud behind him, and turned to see a brown-haired "young" woman about their apparent age step out of the woods. "Though it's rather odd, considering the circumstances surrounding her birth."

Axel shrugged. "I got it from my mother, Eterna. And there was a bit of her in Aeron, remember."

"From mother to son, and from that son to a spiritual successor," Aeric noted. "Not so odd if thought of in that way, then."

Axel leaned on the fence, remembering a green-eyed teenager who looked so very much like himself, except for the eyes and his black hair. "It's been seven years, but it hasn't got any easier, missing him."

Eterna put a hand on Axel's shoulder. "We've all been together for so long. It's no wonder that we still mourn."

Axel put a hand over the crystalline heart that all Aetheraeans possessed in their chests. "It's like a piece of my own soul was cut out. We were part of each other, two parts of a whole."

"Twins are closer than most," Aeric pointed out. "Your souls were linked so closely that even Ashura couldn't bind two other people tighter."

Axel didn't answer for a few heartbeats. "Let's talk about it later," he said, glancing at an approaching Winona. "Right now, we have to deal with the wrath of the mother."

Aeric smiled wryly. "Oh, joy."

Winona stormed forward. "Have you three seen Aerín?"

Axel shook his head. "No, we haven't. Why? Did something happen?"

Winona's eyes narrowed. "You wouldn't happen to be covering for her, would you?"

Axel put on an innocent expression. "Who, me? Come on, my poker face is horrible! You'd have to be worried about Aeric deceiving you!" Aeric's eyes narrowed at Axel just slightly, and Axel suddenly felt beads of cold sweat coalescing on the back of his neck. Staying casual, he turned to Winona. "Anyway, what did happen?"

Winona sighed. "One, it's time for breakfast. Two, she ruined Wallace's sleep and hairstyle."

Axel waved a hand. "I know the latter. What's for the former?"

Winona hit him in the chest. Axel staggered backwards a little; unlike Aerín, Winona was more than capable of giving him a roughhousing in a fight if he wasn't careful. "You ARE covering for her," she accused.

Axel held up his palms. "Alright, I surrender. You got me."

Winona sighed. "Which way did she go?"

"Into the forest somewhere," Axel said, gesturing vaguely in a direction Aerín did _not_ go. "You probably won't catch her at this rate."

Winona stalked off in the indicated direction. "We'll see about that," she muttered.

Axel raised an eyebrow and grinned at Aeric. Aeric sighed and glanced in Winona's direction as the young woman breezed away in an almost casual flash-step. "You're going to pay for that later, I hope you know."

"Not if I can help it," Axel said, spinning on his heel. "Come on, let's have breakfast."

Aerín raced out into a clearing and plucked a special reed from the ground. "Here goes," she muttered. She lifted the reed to her lips and blew a long series of beautiful notes that echoed for miles.

A small whistling call was heard in response, and then a blue bird-like Pokemon with cloudy wings floated down, landing in Aerín's outstretched arms. "Hey, Swablu!" Aerín laughed as the flying-Pokemon happily chattered in her arms. "Ready to explore today?" Her small companion whistled a cheerful affirmative. "Great! Let's go!" Aerín exclaimed, skipping off and setting Swablu on her shoulder.

Fifteen minutes later, the two were making their way through the forest, chatting about various things.

"What? Your brother has a girlfriend?" Swablu nodded happily. "Is she pretty?" Again a series of nods, accompanied by whistles and trills. "Wow, you really look up to her, don't you?" Another wistful nod. "Don't worry, Swablu; you're a good enough friend as you are." Swablu smiled and let out an affectionate trill and nuzzled against her friend. Aerín laughed and gently rubbed the flying-type on the back.

They came upon a large rock formation. There were six seven-foot high rocks placed in a circle around a larger, twelve-foot high rock. Smaller stones surrounded the whole thing, forming a perfect circle around the spot. "What's this?"

Swablu whistled something. "What? What do you mean it's hiding something?" Swablu told her about the mystery surrounding this location.

Until seven years ago, there was a group who frequented this spot every so often. The story was that they would sing a special song to the rocks, and the largest one would reveal a pathway underground. Intrigued, Aerín listened as Swablu sang, lulling her into sleep.

_A group of fourteen teenagers walked into the clearing. In groups of two, they walked up to each of the smaller rocks. The central one was taken by a young man with emerald robes and jet-black hair and a young woman with orange hair and azure robes. One by one, each group began to sing, which caused each rock to glow. The central one shone bright white, the others shone with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple light, respectively. First the white rock glowed, revealing a complex multi-layered barrier that was surrounding it, each part of the barrier glowing a different color and branching off to meet a rock whose glow was the same as its own. The red one was connected to the outermost layer; as the last notes sung by its group finished, it glowed brighter, absorbing the part of the barrier it maintained. In short sequence, the remainder of these barriers were summarily absorbed. The two in the center finished their song, causing the white rock to retract its part of the barrier._

_For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a rumble reverberated through the air, and all the rocks glowed simultaneously. The six smaller rocks flashed, hitting the central stone with streams of brilliant energy, and raised it into the air, revealing a glowing pillar of light._

_Each of the fourteen walked forward and jumped into the pillar, vanishing underground. The last one looked around behind them to make sure no one was watching._

Aerín gasped. That was Uncle Aeric!

_Aeric leapt into the depths and sang out a single note as he fell. With that single note, the stones reversed their streams, lowering the central stone back into its resting place and reforming their barrier. Their glow faded, and the forest returned to being quiet._

Aerín woke up, rousing herself from the depths of the memory dream. She looked at the rock formation.

They were exactly as in the dream, and, with a start, she realized that she had recognized every single one of the people who had entered the hideout underneath. Ashura, Axel, Salvo, Hanna, Eterna, Rosie…every single one of them was a big part of her life.

Then she frowned. _Except one._ She thought about the green-eyed young man who had sung with Aunt Hanna.

_Who is he?_

_And what were they all doing here?_


	3. Chapter 2

_Ten Years Ago_

A shadowed whiteness clouded the view in every direction. Silence was the prevailing noise, with nothing but the whispers of the wind to disturb it.

It betrayed nothing about the enormous airship hiding within the cloud banks.

A young man with jet-black hair and green robes stood in a darkened hangar bay. Sitting next to him was a great white dragon, its scales glowing softly with a cerulean brilliance in the gloom. He paid little attention to the nothingness about him, his attention solely focused on the information being fed to him from another source.

_You will be above enemy lines in two minutes. Make your last preparations now._

"_Aeron, you'd best don your armor,_" an Espeon sitting in the young man's lap noted.

"Mmm," Aeron agreed, keying information into a screen on the wall beside him and then stepping into a glowing blue circle.

Mechanical arms rose from the ceiling and the floor, each holding components of armor. Aeron spread out his arms and pushed his hands through a pair of elbow-length fingerless leather gloves. There was a small clank as an arm tapped against the glove, indicating more than just leather. A pair of arms fixed more components over his robes, shying away as electrical sparks erupted from Aeron's body, coursing through internal circuits in the armor and forcing each component to shift and adjust, conforming to Aeron's body structure for maximum comfort and protection.

Aeron felt a bit of pressure on his right shoulder and looked down to see a dent in the armor plating of that component. He scowled and pulled up a floating holographic screen, calling for a replacement. Sparks dove into the component and forced it to detach the offending plate so that the mechanical arms could replace it. "How did we miss that?" he wondered aloud as the plate was fixed onto his shoulder.

A single arm dangled an earpiece in front of him. Aeron slipped it on and sent an electric signal into it, causing a green lens to extend over his left eye and the piece to fit snugly around his ear so it wouldn't fall loose in combat. _Time until contact?_

_Thirty seconds. Initiate countdown._

Aeron sent an electronic signal into his tactical HUD, initiating a 28-second countdown, accounting for the time lost in communication and activation.

"Scared?" Aeron asked his companions, mounting on the back of the dragon. His Eeveelution companion leapt on after him.

"_Not at all," _Espeon answered.

Aeron's dragonic steed let out a grunt in the negative. Aeron smiled as the timer ticked to 10. "Good."

"I wouldn't have it otherwise."

**3**

**2**

**1**

BEGIN OPERATION

The massive doors in the "floor" of the bay opened. The dragon roared dove downwards at tremendous speed, shooting out of the cloud bank at supersonic speed, loosing a roar that shook the heavens. Down below, enemy scouts shouted and raised the alarm, but they could do little before the dragon dove down and unleashed a barrage of purple laser bolts at close range, ripping the ceiling of the enemy compound wide open with its firepower before pulling up to avoid smashing into it.

Inside, men shouted and retreated from the raw destruction as a lone figure descended through the gap and landed lightly on the floor. Aeron reached down and grasped twin sword hilts, one in each hand, pulling his swords from their sheaths. One blade sparked and flashed like corporeal lightning. The other hummed and whistled through the air as if it was the wind itself. "Good evening, gentlemen."

With a crackle of thunder, Aeron transformed into lightning and leapt forward, breezing through the enemy at more than 150 km/s, felling the surprised soldiers before they could even draw their weapons. Aeron's form resolved at a single spot as the blood splattered into the air, sparks trailing from his limbs as latent charges rejoined their source.

Aeron glanced back, slightly troubled by the sight of the carnage he had left in his wake. Before he could think on it further, a change in air currents behind him caught his attention and leapt straight up, landing lightly on the sword that attempted to stab him from behind, much to the surprise of the soldier who held it.

Aeron could see the naked fear in the man's eyes as he pointed his sword at him. _I suppose a half measure will do here. _A lightning bolt leapt from his sword to the man's chest, crackling in a rapid cadence. As the man screamed in terror, the electricity connected and raced up and down his nervous system, entering his brain and setting his mental state to that of sleeping.

The man's eyes rolled back in his head and he keeled backwards. With a clap of thunder, Aeron was behind him and caught him before he hit the ground, setting him gently down on the floor.

Aeron felt a change in the air, and casually raised his sword, deflecting a laser bolt from a guard turret implanted in the ceiling. He whipped back his left hand and threw his pale green sword at the turret, guiding the blade's trajectory with a torrent of air currents. The sword spun like a leaf in the wind, whirling at speeds too fast for any human and most inhuman eyes to follow before slicing through the turret like it was nothing but air. The sword wheeled back and boomeranged towards Aeron, who caught it as casually as he had thrown it.

"Skyborne to Command," Aeron said, electrically activating his comm. "Room secured."

"Good. Set up your end of the transport circle."

"Understood." Aeron's form crackled with lightning, and in the blink of an eye he drew out a circle of runes in the floor, drawing a logo in the center to personalize it and make it compatible with his energy. He stopped in the center and planted one of his swords into the ground. A long and complex chant spilled from his lips, ringing into the air almost song-like and wrapping the words with energy, changing the fabric of the world with every verse. The circle shone in response to his chant, linking the ground to the sky with an ethereal green light.

* * *

A pillar of light rocketed into the sky from the torn ceiling of the enemy compound, forming a bridge from heaven to earth.

"There it is," a young man with pitch-dark red hair noted, standing up and whirling his twin knuckle-blades into position, their transparent gemstone blades glinting in the light.

"Our side will be up shortly," a young man with equally dark blue hair said from where he sat cross-legged on the ground with his eyes closed and a staff across his lap. As he spoke, a grand blue light spiraled into the sky in a similar manner, signaling the completion of their end of the gate.

"Your move, Salvo," the blue-haired young man said.

Salvo nodded. "Alright, let's go!" he shouted, racing for the portal, followed closely by the men and women under his command. "We need to get this cleaned up before morning!"

* * *

_Present Day_

Axel heard the door open and shut, as well as the familiar rhythm of Aerín's footsteps. He smiled and turned to say something…which died in his throat when he saw the serious look on his niece's face. "Aerín? Is something wrong?"

Aerín sat down at the table and looked at Axel as he sipped his orange juice. "What were you doing in the forest?"

Axel frowned and paused his sipping. "Huh? About when are we talking about here?" He continued drinking his orange juice.

"Until about seven years ago?"

Axel's frown deepened. "And what exactly would I have been doing?"

"Going to a cluster of seven rocks with your friends."

A spray of orange erupted from Axel's mouth as he choked and spluttered. "W-What?" he spluttered.

"You heard me. What were you and Uncle Eddie, Ashura, Haku, Marth, Ike, Aeric, Aunt Hanna, Annabelle, Eterna, and Rosie doing with that green-eyed guy that looks a whole lot like you in the woods?"

Axel's mind whirled. How on earth did she learn of that? How on earth _could_ she have learned of that? None of them would have told her anything, not until they were certain she was old enough to handle the information. No, she had to have learnt it from someone else. But who could have known?

He heard a chirp and noticed the Swablu perched on Aerín's shoulder. _Damn. Should've known._

Fortree City's Swablu and Altaria were rather unusual. Like any other Pokémon, their singing was capable of lulling a target into a deep slumber. Unlike other cases of Pokémon lullabies, however, through some complicated process that Axel never paid attention to, the sleeping target would dream of an event of the singer's selection, almost always the past, but sometimes of the imagination or the present. In other words, the singer could choose what the target was dreaming about, most often retelling a story of ages past in a way that no other culture would be able to replicate.

Axel held up his hands in surrender. "Ok, I give. What did she show you?"

Aerín described her dream, and Axel listened carefully. _Whoa, those Swablu and Altaria aren't bad_, Axel thought, impressed. _That's so extremely accurate that I couldn't even begin to find mistakes. Maybe Ashura or Aeron could. _As soon as he thought the latter name, his heart sank. _Right. He's not with us anymore._

"So what's below those rocks?" Aerín asked, regaining Axel's attention.

Axel smiled, memories flashing through his head. "Tell you what. You eat breakfast, finish your stuff, and do everything your mother wants you to do before lunch, and after lunch I'll take you back there, alright?" Aerín's eyes lit up and she nodded happily. "Good! We'll head out at one o'clock. But make sure you finish up everything, alright?"

"Right!" Aerín replied, already bolting down her breakfast.

* * *

_1:00 PM_

Axel shrugged his shoulders into a blue jacket with silver lining. "Do you guys think it can be done with just us three?"

Aeric sighed. "That passage was designed for at least four people to open, not three."

"We'd have to work really quickly to open it," Eterna agreed. "Even then, I'm not sure it'll happen."

"Oh come on, we've done worse in our lives," Axel scoffed.

Aeric rolled his eyes. "That much I know, Axel. And I'm pretty certain of my limits—not to mention _our _limits."

Eterna took a backpack off of the coat rack and slung it over her shoulder. "It'll take a miracle for us to be able to do that."

"And if that miracle is sitting on your doorstep?" they heard. They turned to see a young man who looked somewhat similar to Eterna standing there, leaning in the doorway.

"Eddie!" Eterna exclaimed, rushing over and launching herself at her twin brother.

"So, what's going on?" Eddie asked, giving his sister a hug before moving on to punch Aeric in the chest and Axel on the shoulder. "Sounds like we're taking somebody _underground_, if you know what I mean."

"That we do, Eddie," Aeric said gravely. "Aerín learned of our hideout."

Eddie whistled, impressed. "Kid's not bad, catching wind of something like that. Who'd she hear it from?"

"A Fortree Swablu. She was sung into an echo dream."

"Ahhhhhhh," Eddie said, sitting down. "So naturally she gets curious about it, and wants to go down there." He stretched. "Well, it's a good thing I've been practicing all of our songs of unsealing, or we'd never get this done."

"How loud can you do them?" Aeric asked.

"Loud enough to wake the dead. Why?"

"We'll all need to sing extra loud in order to wake up those rocks; we haven't used them in seven years," Eterna explained. "They're as alive as the rest of us, after all."

"A-ha. Well, if I can wake the dead, I can probably wake up the questionably living," Eddie mused, examining the ornate gauntlets on his arms. A click sounded as a component retracted, and a glowing gold-orange blade surrounded by faint licks of indigo-lined yellow-orange fire extended from the wrist as he bent back his hand. "I love how Ubisoft gave Ezio the hookblade in Revelations. Finally I can cosplay _properly_ as Ezio without drawing particularly weird stares."

Aeric snorted as he put on a black traveling cloak with silver patterns under the wolf motif. "How will you explain the dragonfire? Not to mention that _your_ blades are telescopic up to one meter rather than one foot."

"Well, I guess I'll just have to knock out anyone who'd care to notice," Eddie replied with a cheery air of nonchalance. Aeric and Eterna groaned/sighed simultaneously (respectively) and quickly checked their defensive barriers. Aeric poked a spot about eye level one foot to Eterna's right, and a burst of purple and silver energy exploded from that point. "That spot's alright," he muttered, moving to the opposite side and giving the same spot one foot to Eterna's left a swift punch. A purple magic circle flashed into view and blocked the punch, but as Aeric put more force on it the barrier began to crack and fade. "This one's getting weak," he noted, opening his palm and murmuring a few words, reinforcing the weak point with his own energy.

Eterna looked at him in annoyance. "I can do it myself, aye?"

Aeric smiled faintly and shrugged. "Never hurts to be careful."

Eterna sighed and gave him a light push, masking the smile in her heart with a show of mild annoyance. "Alright, we're finished over her." She went up to the steps and called up. "Aerín! Are you ready to go?"

"Coming, Auntie!" Axel, Aeric, and Eddie watched Eterna's eyes widen in alarm. She jumped backwards as Aerín bounced down the steps with giant leaps and impeccable accuracy—landing exactly in the spot the young woman had just occupied.

Aerín stood straight and dusted herself off as Swablu fluttered down, resting on her shoulder. "Let's go!"

"Alright, you heard the girl," Eddie said, leaping up and catching the doorway with his hands and lacheing into the air. Aerín stared after him in blank confusion, which drew a laugh from Axel.

"He only just got here, Aerín," Axel explained. "It's not as if he teleported here."

"I beg to differ?" Eddie asked from directly behind them.

"Wah!" Axel yelped, leaping almost ten feet into the air. "Dude, not cool. _Totally_ not cool."

Eddie shrugged and lache'ed out the door once again. "Come on, slowpokes. We don't have all day."

Aeric and Eterna gave simultaneous sighs of weary exasperation as a vein bulged out of Axel's temple. "Who are _you_ calling a slowpoke, Edric? Do you really want me to give you a taste of my _fanservice?_"

Eddie laughed and did a flip, landing in a casual position on a rock. "Bring it, bluehead."

With an almost feral roar, Axel took off like a bullet in Eddie's direction. The indigo-eyed "young" man only had enough time to blink before Axel barreled through him and stampeded into the forest.

"…Ow."

"You _did_ sort of ask for it, you know."

"I guess I did. Serves me right I guess."

"Well, let's move, or he's going to get there first." Aeric stepped backwards as a blue blur shot through the area he occupied and flattened Eddie once again. "About three times."

Eddie rolled out of the way of the blur and managed to stand up as it tore through the area he previously occupied. "Try fifteen times and that ought to be right."

There was a loud crash as Axel plowed into Eddie once again and sent him barreling into a pile of wood. "Make that thirty. I'm moving slowly today."

"Thirty times there and back in about thirty seconds is your idea of _slowly_?" Eterna asked.

Axel shrugged. "My record is three hundred, non-corporeal. What's the difference?"

Eterna sighed and adjusted her pack on her shoulder. "C'mon boys. We've got a tour to give."

* * *

Chirps and growls resounded from all directions as the group made their way through the forest. Axel turned his head to see a herd of Zigzagoon and Linoone running through the bushes. "Things never seem to change out here, do they?" he wondered, looking up as a flock of Swablu and Altaria flew overhead.

Aeric paused and watched grimly as a plane soared overhead. "Some things do."

Eterna followed Aeric's gaze and shrugged. "How much more different could an Aerial Carrier be? Many times worse, even."

"At least we didn't poison the land, sea, or sky to the extent that humans have," Aeric murmured. "Magic is a highly efficient energy source, you have to admit."

"I know, _dummkopf._ That's why we use Aetherium reactors."

Aerín leaned in eagerly on the conversation. "Auntie, Uncle, what are you talking about?"

Aeric and Eterna exchanged looks. "Perhaps later, Aerín."

"Aww, come on, Uncle," Aerín whined, grabbing onto Aeric's arm and putting on a heart-wrenching look of adorable innocence. "Pleeeeeeeaaaaaasssseee?"

Aeric's face and demeanor remained perfectly neutral. However, Eterna suddenly felt the air grow thick with the "young" man's extreme discomfort. "It's a story that goes with our hidden base," he said finally. "We'll tell you all about it after we get there."

Aerín raised up her hand and offered him her pinky. "Pinky promise?"

Aeric gave her one of his subtle smiles and extended his own, wrapping it around the young girl's. "Promise."

Aerín did the chop.

* * *

_5 min later_

"Okay, we're here!" Eddie shouted.

Aeric walked up to one of the six surrounding rocks. "Good. Now sing them quickly."

Axel, Eterna, and Eddie walked up to three other rocks. Aeric closed his eyes and began to sing a strange, lilting melody. Even though he sang softly, the air seemed to hum and whistle along with every note.

Eterna leaned over and gave him a flick on the ear. "Louder, _dummkopf_. A Zubat could sleep right through that."

Aeric opened his right eye and raised an eyebrow at her but nonetheless complied, raising the volume of his melody. White lines of light hummed into existence and arced across the surface of the rock, steadily lending it a gentle white glow. A complex, multi-layered barrier flared into view, the same that Aerín had seen in her dream. Nearby, Eterna began to sing, which kindled a similar but red glow in the rock she stood in front of. Then Axel joined in, turning a third rock orange, and Eddie sang the fourth into a bright shade of yellow.

Aeric finished his melody and vanished in a blur of black energy, reappearing at the rock right next to Eddie's, and sang a similar yet slightly different song, calling forth a bright green light from the rock he stood in front of. Eterna finished her last few notes and, as the red rock absorbed its part of the barrier, she emitted a bright flash of white light and disappeared, reappearing on top of a still-dull rock and coaxed from it a sapphire blue glow. When Axel finished he moved on to the final rock and managed to set it into purple while his previous one absorbed its barrier, while Eddie moved on from his back to the central rock and sang the second half of Aeric's first song.

One by one, the remaining barriers retreated into their emitters, and then the central rock was struck by brilliant streams of energy from the six surrounding it, lifting it high up into the air. Aeric gestured, and the others ran forward, leaping down into the pillar of white light that emitted from the hole underneath the stone.

Aeric turned towards Aerín. "Ready?" Aerín nodded. "Good." He grasped her hand and together they jumped, Aeric uttering the final note as they fell, sealing the entrance behind them.

Aerín looked around as they fell down several stories. "Um, isn't this a long fall?"

Aeric shook his head. "We've fallen from higher. Besides," he added, "You never thought we wouldn't install measures in case visitors arrived, did you?"

They suddenly passed through a series of glowing metallic rings on the wall, which surrounded them with a strange blue-green glow. As they fell through the rings, Aerín noticed their fall slowing, until when they finally reached the floor they were drifting downwards as slowly and lazily as a feather might.

Aerín looked up in awe at the rock that blocked the shaft, now thousands of feet away. "How long did it take you to make this place?"

Aeric smiled wryly. "The initial building took only a few months. But we've been making renovations whenever we felt we needed to."

"Why did you dig this deep underground, though?" Aerín asked as they walked towards a door.

Aeric held up his hand and pressed a button, calling up a holographic screen which he entered a password into before pressing his palm against it and waving it away. "In order to really remain hidden, we had dig extremely deeply to evade the detection of most sensors in our day. This base is out of range of some of the most complex of sensors that were developed, while we used even better ones to listen to the surface. Miles of rock mask one better than any device. This base also runs geothermal energy as well as our own special power sources, the former of which masks the electricity this base uses."

"How far down are we?" Aerín asked as the doors in front of them opened and they walked inside. "A mile? Two?"

"Four, actually," Aeric replied. "And resting a hundred feet above a lake of lava."

Aerín stopped and looked downwards in horror. "LAVA?"

"Relax, Aerín. We've tamed it. It won't be melting through this base anytime soon."

Aerín gave him a skeptical look. "Right…okay…"

Aeric sighed and shook his head. "Seeing it will be believing it, I suppose," he muttered. "Come on."

Aerín followed cautiously after Aeric, glancing downwards at the ground every five steps she took, half expecting to see the steely floor glow red-hot from lava exposure.

Aeric turned a corner and vanished into a doorway, leaving Aerín scrambling to catch up. She passed through the doorway only to discover that the tall young man had vanished through another doorway – one of four that stood before her.

A bead of nervous sweat trailed down Aerín's neck. "Uh, Uncle…?"

"Well, it would be sorely disappointing if you couldn't track me down on your own now, wouldn't it?" she heard, and looked up to see a crystal hovering in midair, humming quietly. "Try and find me."

Aerín cast an apprehensive glance at the doorways before her. "How? I don't know this place!"

"How is it you track down your Pokémon friends so easily?" Aeric's voice replied. Aerín noticed the crystal vibrating a little bit more quickly as her uncle's voice resounded through the hallways. "It's like you can _feel_ where they are, isn't it? As if the air itself seems to hum with their presence."

Even as Aeric spoke, Aerín began to feel a weighty presence from the general direction of the doorways. "Use that same sense. Find my presence. Sense my power."

Aerín tried to hone in on her uncle's location, but then a wave of power surged from the doorways and blasted her backwards, knocking her to the floor. "Uncle, you're too powerful. Your power is everywhere."

"As one of my friends used to say, there is always an eye to a storm like this. One needs to find the calm at the center."

Aerín concentrated and quickly swept her focus over the area, but couldn't find anything. "I can't find you!"

There was silence for a moment. Then, "Try closing your eyes and doing this. The inner eye is often more than capable of detecting flows of energy.

Hesitantly, Aerín closed her eyes and reached outwards with her inner eye, sweeping her internal gaze back and forth across the doorways. Now that she didn't have her eyesight to distract her, she could feel that a wave of black seemed to permeate from the farthest right doorway, a broiling sea of deadliness yet at the same time possessing a peculiar gentle silver light at the center.

"I see you've seen me," Aeric's gentle voice remarked. "Now, come on."

Walking towards the farthest right doorway, Aerín pushed the door open and ran through the hallway and through the door at the corridor's end, straight into the waiting arms of her uncle.

"Well, that sure didn't take too long," Aeric remarked, patting Aerín on the head. "Sorry to get you in a panic, but this sort of thing is best learned under stress."

"Please don't do that again," Aerín begged, her voice slightly muffled due to her face being pressed into Aeric's chest. Aeric nodded and picked the child up, carrying her and humming a gentle melody to sooth her slight distress.

Aerín felt Aeric turn several corners before she was suddenly aware of intense heat and a red glow. "Here it is, Aerín," the young man told her, and turned her around.

Through a large glass window, giant metallic columns with glowing energy lines coursing along their lengths rose out of a lake of lava. Though the worst of the sound and heat was blocked by the glass, the occasional hiss and the sweltering temperature of the room would have been enough to raise the hairs of even the most foolhardy of individuals.

Aerín stared downwards at the molten rock broiling and bubbling below. "Are you sure it's safe?" she asked nervously.

"Of course," Aeric replied, placing his hand against the glass, which prompted lines of light to course through the glass and scan his hand. Strange runes spelled out something underneath his hand before a number of circular holographic screens flickered into view. Touching various points on the circles that seemed rather suspiciously like buttons, Aeric boxed off an area on the window with lines of light and, waving the screen away, touched the box and swept his fingers from the center outwards, causing the box to zoom in. "Look where the pillars meet the magma."

At the base of the pillars, blue-green pulses flared across the surface of the pillars constantly, calming the magma wherever they touched it. "They keep the lava pools in check while at the same time conducting its energy upwards into the rest of the base. This is just one of a huge number of reactor systems here."

Aerín peered closely at the pillars. "Why don't they melt?"

Aeric shrugged. "I have no idea; you'd better be off talking to Ashura on that one. He enchanted them after all."

"Enchanted?"

"We are all more than what we seem, Aerín." Aeric waved the screens away and returned the window to its regular function as a window. "It's time we showed you that."

* * *

_Evergrande City:_

"Move, move, move!"

A young man somewhere in his later teens or early twenties sprinted towards a crowd of people, flames pouring from his skin and arms waving frantically. "Move it! Grenade!"

The crowd, struck dumb, realized what he was talking about and fled just before a small metallic sphere exploded with tremendous force. Even though he was fifty feet away, the young man stumbled from the shock wave and threw up a barrier of pure heat and flame to vaporize the shrapnel before it could slice into him. "Ashura, why didn't you get clear the area?"

"_Forgive me, Salvo, but I had no idea things would turn out in this manner."_

"'Had no idea'? Ashura, these guys are freaking terrorists! They'd do anything for the sake of their beliefs! Just like we would do anything for the sake of ours!"

"_Point taken_," the other voice sighed in his ear. "_I'll divert my attention to evacuating the civilians, but we will need to launch a small-scale offensive to keep them at bay for a short time."_

"Yeah, I get it. Fly in their faces and burn their noses to buy some time, right?"

"_Exactly. I shall send Ike and Rosie with you to attack one group. Hyoshiro and Marth shall take on another."_

"And what of the snipers?"

Bright white and pitch black bolts of energy briefly pierced the daylight, delivering pinpoint strikes to incredibly good sniper posts. _"Suffice to say that our so-called 'countersniper' has those covered."_

Salvo sighed and shook his head with a slightly exasperated smile on his face. "Loves to beat snipers at their game, that guy."

Salvo's vision flew out of focus for a second and then refocused, a trail ahead of him highlighted in a glowing blue light which he knew only he could see at the moment. _"Follow this path. Ike and Rosie will join you at its end, or close to it anyway."_

Concentrating more flame towards his feet, Salvo dashed in the indicated direction.


	4. Chapter 3

Rounding his fifth corner, he stumbled into a surprised group of terrorists. Hearing the sound of their weapons being drawn, Salvo leapt sideways and ran up the wall, still moving towards the armed men. As they opened fire, the pyromancer pushed off the wall and spun to earth, hurling javelins of flame into the group, landing beyond them and unsheathing his bladed gauntlet.

"Come on!" Salvo taunted, calling forth a tremendous blaze which he pushed into their midst. As the flames danced about, he placed his hand atop the back of his gauntlet. The weapon began to glow with the radiance of pure fire, and seemed to split in two. Spinning around, Salvo whipped his hands to either side of his body and seared through the air towards his foes, whirling the flames in his hands into a pair of gauntlets with orange gem-like spikes pointing forward on either side of each gauntlet, which soon let off heat and flame so as to become like Elite Energy Swords from Halo, except red-orange and much wilder and volatile in nature, as if the force contained in these blades had only barely been brought under control.

Salvo gathered flame in his right-hand blade and sent it cascading down upon three different enemy guns. The men wisely abandoned the guns before Salvo's assault reduced the weapons to molten slag in a matter of moments.

Flashes of red light transformed into a Garchomp, a Salamence, and a Metagross, informing Salvo of the presence of trainers among the group. Wasting no time, he directed his fires at the unfortunate Pseudo-Legendaries, engulfing them in roaring infernos that none could hope to remain fighting in for long. Sure enough, one by one they fell, unable to fight against the raw power of heat and flame.

Salvo suddenly noticed a grenade landing in front of his blades. Biting back a curse, he turned around and bit a fast retreat. Before he had gotten out of the blast zone, however, a second one fell towards him, directly into his flames.

"Oh. SHIT."

The air was promptly torn apart by a powerful explosion.

* * *

Aeric suddenly looked up as every glowing surface in the base turned red and every speaker began blaring an alert. "What?"

Eterna leapt up from where she was reading a book and accessed the nearest communication terminal. "Eterna here. What's going on?"

"_Eterna? It's Ashura. We're having trouble in Evergrande. A terrorist group has planted a bomb in the middle of the city, and we need to defuse it quickly."_

"Understood. We'll warp in as quickly as possible."

"_Please do._ _There should only be five minutes until ground zero._" Eterna felt Ashura sever the connection at that point, no doubt to continue directing the others.

Eterna slapped a hand on the intercom button. "Everyone, gear up and head to the warp chamber. There's trouble in Evergrande."

"Roger that," Eddie said, rushing towards the armory. He leapt forward and spun himself in the air so that he would hit the wall ahead feet first. Then he sprang towards the wall to his left and pushed off of it, rolling as he landed and shooting forward at the exact same speed he had started at. A blur speeding past him told him that Axel was already on his way.

Aeric brought Aerín to the command center. "Aerín, stay here," he told her, turning to leave.

"Where are you going, Uncle?" Aerín asked.

"To right a couple wrongs," Aeric said darkly. "Our work is a dangerous business, Aerín. You're not old enough to get tangled in doing what we do."

Aerín was shocked at her uncle's sudden change in mood. The normally gentle-hearted young man before her had transformed into a cold-hearted warrior before her eyes.

Aeric glanced over his shoulder at her and his gaze softened. "Someday, when you're older. And when you know the truth of it all."

Aeric held his hand up to a shadow on the wall. The darkness within rippled, like a pool of water after something was dropped in. An image of a room was shown through the ripples, a mirror image of the room Aerín stood in, except this room was in an inverted color scheme. When the ripples cleared away, Aeric stepped forward, and the shadow rippled again, this time covering the Shadowbringer's secret exit.

Aerín shook her head, bewildered. _What have I gotten into?_

* * *

When Eddie arrived, Axel had already donned his battle attire and was already having magical barriers erected around him. A shadow rippled, and Aeric exited his shadowy realm and took his place on the pedestal. Mechanical arms reached down and dressed him in a silver-lined black shirt. He put on similarly colored vambraces and knee-high armored boots. He stepped into a magical circle and waited as the enchanted construct layered defensive barriers around his person.

As Aeric reached up to grab a combat harness, Eddie himself jumped forward and donned his own combat attire. He quickly extended his blades from his vambraces to make sure he could do so before quickly retracting them. His armored lower legs emitted an orange-fringed purple flame for a moment before returning to their usual intertwined gold and bronze color scheme, encrusted with violet gems.

Eddie obtained his protection and combat harness quickly and joined Aeric and Axel in a large room. "Alright sis, fire it up!"

"Will do." Eterna pulled up three circular holographic screens and spun and slid symbols and subscreens on those screens as well as hitting "buttons" and sending the required information to teleport the three directly into Evergrande.

Spirals of energy arced through the air around them from a series of energy pylons, enclosing them in a cylinder of stacked multicolored lightning-like rings. Eterna watched them anxiously. "Come back safely, alright?"

Eddie grinned and gave her a thumbs up. "Of course! When have we ever reneged on that?"

Eterna, and Aeric looked away. Axel stared glumly at the floor. Eddie mentally cursed himself; he had forgotten yet again.

"Forget what I just said. We promise! Right?"

Eterna managed a smile as she met Eddie's eyes, a sad glimmer flickering through them. "Just go, you doofus."

"Hey!" Eddie protested as Aeric and Axel stepped forward and threw their heads back, allowing the portal chamber to teleport them to Evergrande. "I'm many things, but I object to 'doofus'!"

Eterna covered her mouth an attempt to mask her laugh, though a little giggle escaped the grin she concealed behind her head. "Have it how you will, Eddie. Just get going."

Eddie planted his feet and crouched, then launched into a back tuck. At the very peak of his spin, the portal finally snagged the traceur and whisked him off to his destination.

Eterna clasped her hands in prayer as she watched the portal's energies fade away.

* * *

A line of multicolored lightning traced a circle in midair parallel to the ground. More such circles formed, and created a cylinder of energy floating in the air. A pair of bright flashes, and Aeric and Axel appeared, falling to earth. The two absorbed the shock of the fall with their knees, crouching with a single hand on the ground.

One final flash was emitted within the rings, and Eddie completed his back tuck, falling towards the earth. Instead of simply absorbing the shock by going into a crouch, he hit the ground rolling, and, when his hands were closest to the ground, he pushed off the ground, arcing up into the air like one would from a handspring, and landed perfectly upright. "So, where are we headed?"

"_Give me a moment. I'll give you a heading to follow._"

A small blue lens flipped out of Axel's headphones and flipped down in front of his eye. He frowned. "Ashura, what's wrong with Salvo?"

"_He was hit by a grenade. Detonated on his own flames._"

Axel whistled. "Ouch."

"_Part of your course will take you near him so you can check his status and back him up._"

"Understood," Aeric stated. The three waited a moment as a blue trail marked itself in their vision. "Let's go."

The three charged forward.

* * *

Pain. Complete agony in the left side.

So much time in corporeal form makes one really forget why it's a bad experience to be next to an exploding grenade.

Salvo slowly opened his eyes to see a gun barrel aimed directly in between his eyes. His eyes fixed upon it, and all thought stopped for an instant.

"Don't move, young one," the man who held it said. "I have no wish to finish the task, but if I must then I must."

Salvo ran through his options. His magical barriers were cooked by the fighting already, so there was no point in hoping they'd block it. At this point blank range, he wouldn't be able to do anything without the man pulling the trigger and ending his escape attempt. Melting the gun, incinerating the man, going corporeal; any of that, and he'd be dead before he finished. He had no doubt that even an Aetheraean would be brought down by this kind of situation.

The only thing to do then, would be to wait until the man's attention was drawn away by something.

Salvo inwardly grimaced. He hated waiting.

* * *

"_Eddie, Aeric, and Axel have arrived._"

"Good timing," a "young" man with blue hair remarked and swung his glittering white blade in an intricate arc. In its wake, several holographic copies of the blade materialized, each one a different color. Drawing his sword back, he stabbed straight at his foes, fifty feet ahead. Mimicking his motion but flying much farther, the holograms surged forward, piercing the weapons and body armor of the unfortunate men and women who stood in their way. "I can't deny that we need the extra help."

A glittering gold blade fell upon the necks of two warriors and stabbed through the third. The one who held it laid it across his shoulders and sighed. "Yeah, with my power type we'll need it. There's no telling what kind of shit would fly off the hook if I went all out."

A torrent of roots and vines dove in and out of the concrete and surged upwards, crushing the last of their foes in the area. A woman somewhere in her early twenties of apparent age stepped forward and gestured for the foliage to mop up the blood and drag the bodies underground. "They ought to return to the earth," she explained as the two gave her weird looks. "A proper burial is deserving of any living being, even our foes. Wouldn't you say so, Marth, Ike?"

Ike sighed and shouldered his golden blade. "I guess so, Rosie, but the way you do it is always so creepy…"

"Shall I have give you the honors next?" Rosie asked sweetly. The bits of grass poking out from the cracks in the pavement waved with a murderous innocence in the wind that made Ike shiver.

Marth stepped in between the two. "Now, now, let's not get at each other's throats. We've lasted this long in harmony; we can do with a few more years."

Rosie shrugged and gave Ike a look as she spun around. "Whatever you say, Marth."

"_Enough, you three. We need you to press on and hit them from the other side._"

"Yeah, yeah, follow the glowing blue light that only we can see," Ike muttered, rushing in the indicated direction.

"_It would do you good to be more serious about this._"

"I am serious. But I show it my own way."

"_Whatever you say. Just get things done._"

* * *

A group of terrorists marched the streets warily, their weapons drawn and at the ready. They swept their gaze from side to side, front and behind. But the one direction they failed to look at was _up._

Eddie's claw-armored digits grasped the window ledges that held him up firmly. "Can we move yet?"

Aeric kept his eyes on the group, tracking their gaze. "Not yet." Eddie growled but stayed put.

Axel looked down from his precarious perch. "Can't we do something about them?"

"It would be easier to not deal with them," Aeric pointed out, casually reaching up and plucking something from his harness. He pulled out a pin with his mouth and hurled it as hard as he could down an alleyway. "Look away."

A booming retort and a blinding flash of light exploded in the alleyway, drawing the attention of the men. They ran down it, failing to realize the flashbang was a diversion. "Now we can go."

"Finally!" Eddie exclaimed. Shifting his grip, he brought up his legs and kicked off of the wall, spinning around to face the street across. He caught onto another ledge with his fingers, and then scrambled up the many more handholds on the building towards the roof. Not to be left behind, Axel and Aeric chased after him, using their various skills to reach the top.

Eddie flipped up onto the roof and began running, using jumps, flips, and vaults to move past obstacles without losing speed. The gems on his armor glowed, and his speed increased to its uppermost limits as he charged towards the edge.

A man looked up as a shadow passed over him, just in time to see Eddie clearing the gap and continuing on. Axel and Aeric flew overhead as well. "They're up above!" he shouted.

"What? But how did the snipers not get them?" someone else asked.

A woman with a radio listened intently. "All the snipers were taken out some time ago. We sent for them to be replaced, but there's a chance that they haven't all gotten there."

The man growled. "Have some of the men divert their retreat along their path. We're so close to blowing the bomb now; we can't have it-"

The man abruptly dropped to the ground, a black knife sprouting from his back.

"I thought you told us not to engage?" they heard and turned to see Aeric, Axel, and Eddie standing there with their weapons drawn.

"Maybe," Aeric said. "But they noticed us. They can't be allowed to interfere."

They raced through a hail of gunfire, weaving in and out of the sights of the gunmen. Aeric held up his hand and called for a shaft of darkness from his shadow. It flowed out like a torrent of black smoke, deadly and focused. "_Raze the earth and darken the sky...Mugetsu."_

Shadows overlapped with more shadows and transformed the smoky darkness into a long double-ended bladed staff. The blades were of a darkened metal with shining silver edges, and every motion it made left shadows in its wake. Aeric twirled the weapon too gracefully and far too quickly for a weapon of that size and scythed the bullets away from himself and his companions. With the same motion, he danced in between two of his foes and cut them down in a single sweep. Maintaining form, he allowed Mugetsu to twirl around his finger before he grasped it firmly and heaved a wave of darkness at a man attempting to gun down Axel.

Axel shook his fist at Aeric as the man went down. "Come on! I was about to give him my very best fan service!" he shouted as a number of others moved to shoot at him.

Aeric sighed. "Calm down. There are more fans to hand it out to."

Axel drew his sword and threw it into the air. He leapt skyward and spun around, catching his weapon on the third rotation and landing spinning, cutting down the radiowoman in the process. He held his blade up to his arm. "_Rule over the midnight heavens…Shiruba-Getsu._"

A gleam of light traveled along the length of the silvery blade. Then the blade melted into silvery blue energy and wrapped around his arm, transforming into a sapphire-encrusted silver gauntlet, from which a silvery blue light poured from every seam and gap in its armor plating. Axel clenched his fist and extended a shining blade of light from his gauntlet. "Let the fan service begin."

Axel flickered to the side of two of the men whose guns had previously been trained on him. Two slash of light, and they were down. Axel sucked the energy from his blade back into his gauntlet and made a finger gun, pointing it at a cluster of three. Three needles of light flew from his finger tip and burned holes in between their eyes, felling them instantly as the teenager extended his blade again and waved it around himself a hundred times, vaporizing the bullets that dared to fly his way.

Two gun men ducked behind cover and yanked out their gun magazines to reload, but as soon as they did so an indigo blur bounced up and back flipped into the air, bringing its feet down upon their weapons and sending them to the ground. Eddie flicked his wrists and extended a pair of glowing gold-orange blades with faint purple-fringed orange flames dancing around them from his bracers. "Not today," he told them as the blades slid to three feet long. He slid his index fingers into two of the holes that were spaced evenly every six inches along the length blades.

Eddie crouched and leapt up, spinning through the air and ricocheting off of the walls. He landed directly between his enemies and spun in a circle with his arms outstretched, slashing the two with his burning blades. He lifted his finger to let his right blade to retract two feet into his bracer and then he slipped his finger into the corresponding hole. The flames around the blade grew more prominent; the air was already feeling much hotter. Eddie pulled in his left blade as he dove forward and rolled around the corner, pressing his hands against the ground partway through the roll and launching into the air, landing directly on the shoulders of a surprised gunman. A stream of dragonfire from the right blade and one scream of agony later, the man lay scorched at Eddie's feet.

Eddie checked the man's pulse. Amazingly, he was still alive. The impressed traceur took a device out of his pocket and tossed it down on the man. A magic circle spread under the man and froze him in time and space, ensuring he would live until his capture. For now, though, Eddie was alerted to the presence of a large group of reinforcements by Ashura.

Eddie frowned. These newcomers were more heavily armed and armored, and they had numbers. The armaments were the problem; these weapons could hurt any one of them, and they had plenty of them to fire on them. Eddie frowned as he tried to think of a way to dispatch them easily.

A glint of light where there shouldn't have been any caught his eye. He looked up and saw a spire of ice jutting up from a rooftop. He squinted and looked up to the top, seeing if the person he hoped was at the top.

Hyoshiro Hitsugaya gazed down at him from the peak and gave him an almost imperceptible tilt of the head.

Eddie acted immediately, extending his blades, this time with hooked sheaths that he dug into the side of the building to help him scale much more easily. Up above, Hyoshiro leapt off the roof and held out his hand in front of him, freezing himself a ramp down to earth with glowing white ice and diving into the thick of the fight, impaling his foes with spears of ice unleashed from the tip of his sword. Clutching the chain that extended from the hilt, he twirled the crescent blade at the end in a circle before releasing it, allowing it to wrap around an outstretched gun and freeze onto it. Yanking hard, the silver-haired young man wrenched the frozen firearm from its wielder's grasp and caught it himself, allowing the ice to break before he held the weapon one-handed and sprayed into the backs of Axel and Aeric's assailants.

Eddie reached the roof and ran to the edge. He took a deep breath and retracted his blades. He spread his arms to either side and closed his eyes.

The startled terrorists below looked up as Eddie performed a Leap of Faith.

Hyoshiro turned around and summoned his power over water and ice, forcing the water in the air to deposit into a ramp of ice that Eddie fell towards. Wasting no time, he also launched a bolt of freezing power at the falling traceur. Eddie angled his feet and allowed the vapor around his feet to freeze into a snowboard like shape. He touched down upon a steeper section of ramping and surfed down, weaving through the gunfire that cracked and shattered the ice as easily as one would avoid a flurry of falling leaves.

At the bottom, the ramp curved upwards. Eddie slid over this section and was propelled into the air with his momentum. As he did so, his feet caught fire and melted free of his makeshift snowboard. Somersaulting as he flew, he landed feet-first on the shoulders of one of his assailants. Several _somethings_ broke. Not _Eddie's_ bones.

As Eddie sprang from his falling victim's shoulders, he pushed off of various upheld weapons and melted them with his still-flaming feet. Extending his blades till they jutted out one foot, he intensified their heat until their glow was more intense than sunlight itself, and then, launching himself into the air and spinning around until he was upside down, unleashed the trapped flames as a pair of fiery bolts of energy that collided with the centermost person among these reinforcements.

Eddie landed on the ground and walked away as a fiery explosion tore apart the air.

* * *

A large explosion caught the attention of Salvo's captor, causing the man to glance sideways for an instant.

An instant was the only opening he needed.

Salvo's hand shot up and threw the weapon aimed at him aside. Burning upright, he rammed his shoulder into the man and hurled him into a wall. A loud _bang_ told him that his maneuver had worked.

"You should me mercy. I'll show you the same and leave you alone," Salvo told the unconscious man before turning to see the source of the commotion one block over. "Hmph, couldn't have been more subtle about it, could you?"

"Jerkface. Show some love for the guy who saved your neck, how about?" Eddie demanded, giving the pyromancer a bro-hug. "Heard you got a nade in the side. How's it holding up?"

Salvo grimaced. "I wish I could say it's fine, but it's not."

"Hmm, so that's how it is, huh?" Eddie clapped a hand onto his friend's shoulder. "Fall back and rest up some, then. We'll take care of the rest. Three can take care of what one was meant to do!"

"Tch." Salvo snorted. "Do it well or I'll have your head, 'kay?"

Eddie waved him away. "Get going or I'll send you off myself."

"Yeah, whatever." Salvo shrugged and walked off. Eddie took careful note of the slight limp and the subtle care he was giving his left side.

"Come on, Eddie." He turned to see Aeric and Axel waiting up ahead. "Hyoshiro will take Salvo to safety. We have to get rid of the bomb in the meantime. Only two minutes left."

* * *

_One minute later…_

Eddie reached around and fumbled around in his pack. He frowned and kept rummaging as Mugetsu scythed through the air again and again with lethal precision, leaving no room for their opponents to get past.

Axel had ordered them to go on as he fought off a battle group to buy them time. Now Eddie stood before the bomb, struggling to find a bomb defusing kit as Aeric followed Axel's example.

"Eddie, any day now might be appreciated," Aeric hissed as a bullet nicked him in the shoulder. Twirling his weapon of mass destruction, he lanced out with blasts of pure darkness and obliterated the man who had dared to wound him.

"I know, I know, I'm getting it!" Eddie snapped. "It's not like-!"

_Thump._

Startled, Aeric cast an eye in Eddie's direction. The traceur was standing frozen, his pack sitting on the floor, the air around him that of horror. "Oh. SHIT."

"_Eddie?_ _What's the matter?_"

"Guys…"

"WHAT?!" they all shouted in unison, exasperated and impatient.

"I DON'T HAVE A KIT!"


End file.
